1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of and an apparatus for automatically packaging a given number of encased products, each comprising a product sealed in a case barrel and a cap mounted on the case barrel, in a packaging sheet.
2. Description of the Related Art
It has been commonly practiced in the packaging industry to obtain an encased product by loading a product, such as a cartridge housing a rolled photographic photosensitive film, into a film case of synthetic resin, shrink-package a given number of encased products together into a shrink package, and cover the shrink package with an outer pack, thus producing a pillow-type packaged product.
Packaged products are available in a variety of forms. According to one form, a packaged product contains a single encased product. According to another form, a packaged product as a box packages a plurality of encased products therein, ranging from two to thirty encased products. According to still another form, two through five encased products are put together and placed in an outer pack, which will be hereinafter referred to as xe2x80x9cassembly packaged productxe2x80x9d.
There are two types of assembly packaged products known in the art. According to one type, two through five encased products are sealed together in an outer pack while they are being arrayed with the case caps on the film cases being oriented in a direction across the direction in which the encased products are fed, i.e., while they are being arrayed abreast or side by side. According to the other type, two through three encased products are sealed together in an outer pack while they are being arrayed with the case caps being oriented in the direction in which the encased products are fed, i.e., while they are being arrayed in tandem or end to end.
Specifically, as shown in FIG. 15 of the accompanying drawings, a cartridge (product) 2 housing a rolled photographic photosensitive film is loaded into a film case (case barrel) 3, and a case cap 4 is attached to an open end of the film case 3, thus producing an encased product 5.
Then, a plurality of, e.g., two, encased products 5 are arranged in tandem or end to end, and shrink-packaged by a shrink sheet (packaging sheet) 6b, producing a tandem-arrayed shrink-packaged product 7b. Alternatively, four encased products 5, for example, are arrayed abreast or side by side, and shrink-packaged by a shrink sheet (packaging sheet) 6a, producing an abreast-arrayed shrink-packaged product 7a. The tandem-arrayed shrink-packaged product 7b and the abreast-arrayed shrink-packaged product 7a are sealed respectively in outer packs 8b, 8a, producing packed products 9b, 9b. 
Conventional packaging apparatus are only designed to automatically package the abreast-arrayed shrink-packaged product 7a. It has been customary in the art to manually package the tandem-arrayed shrink-packaged product 7b in the outer pack 8b. Therefore, the conventional packaging apparatus fail to efficiently meet requirements for the selective production of the abreast-arrayed shrink-packaged product 7a and the tandem-arrayed shrink-packaged product 7b, and are poor in applicability in the manufacture of differently packaged products.
It is a major object of the present invention to provide a method of and an apparatus for automatically and efficiently packaging differently oriented encased products with a simple process and arrangement.
In a method of and an apparatus for automatically packaging a given number of encased products according to the present invention, the encased products are forcibly arrayed to have their caps oriented in one direction, and then sorted selectively to a first feed path and a second feed path depending on the packaging pattern for the encased products. On the first feed path, the encased products are fed in a first attitude. On the second feed path, the encased products are fed in a second attitude which is different from the first attitude.
The encased products arrayed in the first attitude by the first feed path or the encased products arrayed in the second attitude by the second feed path are packaged by a packaging sheet. Therefore, a certain number of encased products can selectively and automatically be packaged in one of the different first and second attitudes. The apparatus is therefore highly flexible in applications, and is much more economic than if dedicated machines are used to package the encased products in the first and second attitudes.
The above and other objects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent from the following description when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which a preferred embodiment of the present invention is shown by way of illustrative example.